Closeted Skeletons
by celtic33
Summary: Booth bonds with Hodgins set after Yanks in UK. Lots of background info in character's pasts and explanation of Booth's Belt buckle


**A/N:** I don't own anything. Well maybe the writing but the characters or songs. Nope not a one. Special thanks to blc for being my beta :-)

_Slight spoilers for season 4_

Booth had only been back from England for three days and he could see how much had changed with his brain trust, his squints at the Jeffersonian. None of them were handling Zack's transgressions well. Avoidance seemed the preferred coping mechanism. And that was before this whole tropical storm Birimbau blew through and managed to break some of the bonds that were already stressed to their limit.

He knew that something needed to be done to salvage the operation. He chuckled at the thought of Bones comforting Angela. It's not that she's clueless; it's just that she's never had the practice. And furthermore, at least she has somebody to talk to. Poor Hodgins was still bereaving his best friend's betrayal and then he loses Angela leaving him with Cam or Sweets to confide in. But there was another option…

"Two Whisky Sours please," he told the bartender and laid a ten spot on the bar. He grabbed the drinks and headed to the booth where his weary looking friend sat staring at the rack holding assorted condiments.

"Here you go buddy," Booth said as he placed the drink in front of his friend.

The entomologist's eyes glanced over at the drink when he heard the ice cubes clink against the glass. "Thanks," he muttered.

"So are we drowning our sorrows or what?" Booth asked as he lifted his glass and held it out for Hodgins to reciprocate.

"I thought I was the only one with sorrows right now," Hodgins said. "Since when did you let your fiancée break up with you for no good reason?"

"We all have our own skeletons in our closets buddy," Booth said. "Just because the vast majority of mine aren't romantic in nature doesn't mean they're any less intimate."

Hodgins lifted up his glass to connect with Booth's. "Bottoms up," he said as he downed his liquid anesthetic until he saw his blurry friend through the fragments of ice in the bottom of his glass.

"So is this the part where I bare my soul and you tell me it's not my fault?" Hodgins asked snidely, though he really hoped Booth could brighten his spirits instead.

"Well since you already know what I'm going to say," Booth said as his mind was racing through different interrogating tactics to get his friend to open up, "Let's just enjoy our drinks then."

They sat in silence for a minute or two as Booth scanned the room, gauging what to say next.

"I know it's tough, what you're going through, but I'm just here as your friend," Booth said. "I know you don't have a lot of people you can talk to right now. Cam's your boss and Angela's boss too for that matter. Bones is already with Angela consoling her. Zack's incarcerated and Sweets will just want to analyze you like you're a new toy."

"And I have virtually no family as well," Hodgins added, "Angie was my support."

"I've been there buddy," Booth said. "When I proposed to Rebecca when she got pregnant with Parker and she shot me down, that was almost my lowest point in my life. But in hindsight, even if we had gotten married, it probably never would've worked out because we wanted different things."

"Yeah hindsight is 20-20," Hodgins said as looked despondently at his glass. "Angela was the one though. She understood me and didn't judge me. She fell in love with me for me and not because of my family's financial success."

"So what happened?" Booth asked as he swirled his ice cubes around the amber liquid. He glanced back at his friend who was slightly hunched over, staring into the depths of his glass, trying to organize his wayward thoughts.

"I don't know man, it just happened like a whirlwind. I don't even know," Hodgins said as he swirled his drink over the ice cubes before taking a swig. "The first thing that happened was that Cam slept with the ex and Angela was pissed but she said she wasn't and then I found out Angela kissed him. I mean she hasn't seen him in years and forgot she was even married to the guy and the first thing she does is jump in his arms and kiss him. Who does that?"

"I'm sure she had a reason," Booth said. "I'm not sure what that reason was but Angela seldom does things without a reason. So then what happened?"

"I don't know, we were sitting in the diner talking and suddenly she questions whether I trust her and whether she trusts me and then she's walking out saying I'm not stopping her. Like what was I supposed to do? I was shocked that she'd drop a bomb on me like that and I'm reeling like Mike Tyson hit me and she wants me to know that I didn't try to stop her. It all happened too fast. What was I supposed to do? My first instinct was to tie her down to the table and hash things out but I figured keeping her captive wouldn't do any good."

"You got that right," Booth said with a grimace as he remembered his own experiences with the horrors of war. "And I've been held captive before. It wasn't fun."

"I can imagine what it must've been like," Hodgins said. "At least you knew you had friends looking for you when Gallagher held you in that hangar. When Dr. B. and I were trapped underground we knew everyone was looking for us, but Dr. B. really held it together. She has a lot of faith in you and if she wasn't there with me, I know to this day that I never would've gotten out alive."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, I mean you were hit by a car. But yeah, I was grateful for you guys too," Booth said. "But that wasn't the first time I'd been a prisoner. I was in places where nobody even knew we were there. When I knew no one was coming."

"You mean when you were a sniper?"

"Yeah," Booth nodded. "It was when I knew no one was coming-- if I wanted to survive, I was on my own. I'd been tortured but still escaped. I was too stubborn to give in and just die and let them win. That's kind of how I got my nickname."

"Like Sully and ummm Peanut, right?"

"Yeah sort of but mine is way cooler," Booth said with a crooked smile as he prepared to share some of his bittersweet memories. "I was the Rooster."

"Your nickname was a farm animal?" Hodgins asked in disbelief. "I thought it would be something like Maverick or Iceman."

"No, well, yes but that's not why I was given that name," Booth said. "You see, we were just out of basic training and most of the other guys all had nicknames. There was Cowboy, Rerun, Gonzo…you know the typical type of male bonding. Well, anyway, they never got around to a nickname for me and they just called me Booth."

"I can understand," Hodgins said. "Your name is already monosyllabic so there's no need to shorten it."

"Well I didn't actually get my nickname until I was with the Rangers being trained as a sniper," Booth said. "Well, I was assigned to the Rangers in '93 and a lot of the senior guys had their own theme songs. You know, like how athletes listen to a specific song to get pumped up for the game? Since I was new I didn't have a theme song."

Hodgins snorted to himself, remembering high school. "I always wanted my theme song to be either the theme song to _The Greatest American Hero_ or Twisted Sister's _We're Not Going to Take It_. Very rebellious."

"I never would have guessed that," Booth said sarcastically. "So anyway, I can't say where we were because that is still classified—but Alice in Chains' _Rooster_ came out around then and it kind of became my theme song."

"That's a great song," Hodgins said as he started humming a few notes.

"And the lyrics fit too," Booth said. "Ain't found a way to kill me yet, Army green was no safe bet, here comes the Rooster, you know he ain't gonna die…."

"Okay so I remember the song," Hodgins said. "So when did they start calling you Rooster?"

"After a few successful missions and a few that were successful but with heavy losses," Booth said as a waitress came over with another round of drinks. "There was one mission in particular, we had a team of four and were ridiculously outnumbered—I was the last man standing, from both sides. I dragged the bodies of my team onto a helicopter and brought us all back home."

"Did you even get a medal?" Hodgins asked solemnly.

"Nope, I was just doing my duty and besides," he said with a raised eyebrow and a pointed grin, "we were never there."

"So does Dr. B know?" Hodgins asked as he glanced at the condensation pooling on the table around his drink. "I mean about your nickname. If I recall both her and Angela were curious."

"No one knows except some of my old Ranger buddies," Booth said sternly, "And now you. So I'm trusting you to keep it a secret."

"You got my word on that G-Man," Hodgins said. "Hey is that why you wear your 'cocky' belt buckle; because it reminds you of your nickname?"

"Actually, yeah — it's a reminder, like my poker chip, to keep me focused on righting that cosmic balance sheet," Booth said.

"Oh yeah," he said. "I vaguely remember hearing about that from Ange."

"Angela huh?" Booth asked with a furrowed brow and a coy smile. "I swear that woman's interrogation skills put mine to shame any day."

"You don't have to tell me," Hodgins said as he shrugged his shoulders. "I was trying to throw her a surprise birthday party last year and she figured it out and changed all the decorations on me. It took an hour of haggling at the store before I gave in and took the birthday supplies I wanted and the graduation supplies that she ordered."

"I remember that," Booth said with a chuckle before watching the smile fade from his friend's face. "Hey man, I know it's painful but remembering the good times goes a long way in the healing process."

Hodgins nodded, "I know but it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Very true," Booth said as he swirled around his ice cubes before taking a sip.

"You said before that your skeletons were intimate too," Hodgins said. "I don't understand the difference between nonromantic intimacy and romantic intimacy."

"It wasn't always intimacy that I experienced," Booth said as he swirled his drink letting the ice cubes clink against the glass. "Sometimes, it was intimacy that I saw. Let me tell you something. You're staring through a scope at a child's birthday party, complete with balloons, and then moments later you're watching everyone screaming as the child's father crumples while dropping a present intended for the child. That same child who has no idea that his father, the perfect role model, has been taken out because he is responsible for countless crimes against humanity."

"So there's more than one type of voyeur, huh?"

"I never thought of it that way," Booth said as he remembered that consoling Hodgins didn't necessitate revealing classified information. "So tell me about your family. I mean I know they run the Cantilever Group but there's got to be more to the story."

"Well there's not much to tell," Hodgins said. "I'm an only child and my parents were never around because they were flying all over the world. I went to a boarding school and then off to college. I always made acquaintances very easily but real friends were hard to come by. By college, I figured out people thought they could get something out of me because of my family's wealth."

"That might explain your conspiratorial tendencies," Booth said with a sympathetic grin.

"That's probably why I thought of Zack as a little brother too—he also felt so removed from his family, though it was more because his family didn't understand the way he thought like we did."

"Well I'm not sure any of us really understood him," Booth said, echoing Hodgins' unspoken thought. "But he certainly fit in."

"I guess I should've been paying more attention to Zack but I was so wrapped up finding Angela's husband," Hodgins said, bitterly. "And for what? I spent all that energy just to have Angela break up with me and Zack's now incarcerated."

"I told Bones the same thing that I'm about to tell you," Booth said. "Zack was in control of his own destiny and I wish that any of us could've caught the change in his behavior—but we didn't. Even if we did, I'm not sure it would've made a difference. The only thing we can do now is to hope and pray that he will be exonerated."

"I guess but I just feel helpless," Hodgins said. "I wish there was something else we could do."

"Me too, but I think Sweets was right, though I'll never tell him that" Booth said with a pained grin. "I think we need to let it out and not bottle it up. It's part of the grieving process."

"Since when have you started listening to Sweets?"

"The kid has his moments," Booth said. "I think if we can all continue to be there for each other and give each other occasional shoulders to cry on, we'll be better able to help give Zack the support he needs."

"Is it the alcohol talking or are you really letting your guard down?"

"It's not the alcohol," Booth said with his Charm Smile, "It's just my inability to suppress my alpha male over-protectiveness. That and I am a father so that just heightens my own tendencies."

"You know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship," Hodgins said, eyeing the G-Man with a new understanding from just those two, short, life-changing anectdotes.

"Handsome," Booth replied, charm smiling again. "I don't do beautiful."

Hodgins chuckled, for the first time in days. "Handsome it is."


End file.
